Chatting Up A Storm - Claudia Cragg

Soulful jazz singer Billie Holliday is remembered these days for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as and Claudia Cragg, @claudiacragg, speaks here with about the surprising ways in which Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion. is not a new biography of the jazz legend, nor does the book come up with many new findings about the life of the much-studied singer or the thoroughly documented jazz milieu she inhabited. Rather, the book offers a subtle recontextualization of Holiday’s life. It presents a vivid portrait of an iconic jazz artist not known for piety or ties to organized religion. Fessenden does investigate in greater detail than previous books the influence of Holiday’s Catholic upbringing, in particular her two stints at the . Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, she will explore the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in